Bridging PPC Specific Advice With Marketing Advice – All Things PPC Podcast Ep6
SUBSCRIBE:
Bridging PPC Specific Advice With Marketing Advice – All Things PPC Podcast Ep6
This week co-founders Chris and Dan talk about bridging the gap between advice that is specific to Pay Per Click and general marketing advice.
Press play on the video below to start listening!
Bridging PPC Specific Advice With Marketing Advice | All Things PPC Podcast Ep6
Welcome back to the All Things PPC Podcast! In Episode 6, co-founders Chris and Dan engage in a comprehensive discussion about bridging the gap between Pay Per Click (PPC) advice and general marketing strategies. This episode is essential for anyone looking to enhance their understanding of how PPC fits into the broader marketing landscape.
Episode Overview
In this episode, Chris and Dan dive deep into the world of marketing, breaking down the fundamental principles that apply across the board, whether you’re dealing with PPC or general marketing strategies. They explore how integrating these principles can lead to more effective campaigns and better overall results.
Key Topics Covered
The W’s of Marketing
Understanding the W’s of marketing—Who, What, When, Where, and Why—is crucial for any marketer. Chris and Dan explain how these elements play a pivotal role in both PPC and general marketing. They discuss:
- Who: Identifying your target audience and understanding their needs.
- What: Defining what you’re offering and how it meets your audience’s needs.
- When: Timing your campaigns to align with your audience’s behaviour and market trends.
- Where: Choosing the right platforms and channels to reach your audience.
- Why: Clarifying the purpose behind your campaigns and what you aim to achieve.
Actionable PPC Tips
The episode is packed with specific, actionable tips for optimising PPC campaigns. Chris and Dan share their expert advice on:
- Keyword Research: Finding the right keywords to target for maximum impact.
- Ad Copywriting: Crafting compelling ads that drive clicks and conversions.
- Bid Management: Efficiently managing bids to maximise ROI.
- Performance Tracking: Using analytics to measure and improve campaign performance.
Marketing Fundamentals
Understanding the broader principles of marketing can significantly enhance your PPC efforts. Chris and Dan discuss:
- Branding: Building a strong, recognisable brand that resonates with your audience.
- Content Marketing: Creating valuable content that attracts and engages potential customers.
- Customer Journey: Mapping out the customer journey to better understand and cater to your audience’s needs.
- Integrated Campaigns: Combining PPC with other marketing strategies for a cohesive approach.
Real-World Examples
To illustrate these concepts, Chris and Dan share real-world examples and case studies. These examples highlight how integrated marketing strategies can drive success and provide practical insights that you can apply to your own campaigns.
Why This Episode Matters
This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in digital marketing. Whether you’re a PPC specialist looking to broaden your understanding or a general marketer aiming to refine your PPC skills, you’ll find valuable takeaways that can help you achieve your marketing goals.
Listen and Subscribe
Don’t miss out on this insightful episode. Tune in now and discover how to bridge the gap between PPC-specific advice and general marketing strategies.
🔔 Subscribe to our podcast on your favourite platform and hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest episodes! 👍 Like and share this episode if you found it helpful. 💬 Comment with your thoughts and questions. We’d love to hear from you!
Additional Resources
For more in-depth articles and resources on PPC and marketing strategies, visit our blog and explore our extensive library of content designed to help you succeed in your marketing efforts.
Thank you for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the episode!
Timestamps
0:00 – 5:00
- Introduction to the importance of choosing appropriate marketing channels.
- Discussion on resource allocation and avoiding spreading marketing efforts too thin.
5:01 – 10:00
- Emphasis on conversion tracking and its significance.
- Analogies drawn between tracking and using a navigation system.
10:01 – 15:00
- The role of historical marketing data in shaping future strategies.
- Discussion on budget and resource planning, aligning budgets with financial years.
15:01 – 20:00
- Project timelines and stakeholder involvement.
- The need for flexibility in marketing strategies, especially in unforeseen circumstances.
20:01 – 25:00
- Introduction to the marketing framework: Why, Who, What, Where, and When.
- Importance of defining marketing goals and objectives.
25:01 – 30:00
- Persona mapping and understanding target audiences.
- Transition from broader to niche targeting strategies.
30:01 – 35:00
- Campaign structure and the pitfalls of a ‘spray and pray’ approach.
- Precise targeting to reduce advertising costs and improve engagement.
35:01 – 40:00
- Crafting effective marketing messages focusing on benefits over features.
- Establishing emotional connections with the audience.
40:01 – 45:00
- Unique selling propositions and customer-centric approaches.
- Closing remarks on the advantages of detailed audience understanding and tracking.
Notable Quotes
- “Conversion tracking is like using a navigation system for your marketing efforts.” – Highlights the importance of setting up conversion tracking to guide and refine business strategies.
- “Marketing strategies should include flexibility to adapt to unexpected changes like the COVID-19 pandemic.” – Underlines the importance of agility in marketing plans.
- “The why is the first critical element of any marketing campaign; it defines your goals and the purpose behind your efforts.” – Emphasizes starting with clear objectives.
- “Understanding your target audience reduces costs and increases engagement, making your marketing efforts more efficient.” – Points out the benefits of precise targeting.
- “People buy holidays, not flights. Sell the bigger picture, the end benefit, rather than mundane activities.” – An analogy to stress the importance of selling outcomes.
- “Avoid the ‘spray and pray’ approach; focus on creating multiple campaigns tailored to specific demographics and offerings.” – Advice on structuring campaigns for effectiveness and cost efficiency.
- “Be a sharp shooter, not broad and unfocused. Detailed audience understanding can significantly enhance your marketing results.” – Encouragement to focus deeply on target demographics.
Understanding your why is very much that, almost the foundations of your building. You know, if you don’t get the foundations right, nothing else from there on out really is going to be able to thrive.
Hello and welcome to another episode of all things ppc. I’m here today with Dan, who is the co founder here at PPC Geeks. How are you doing this morning, Dan?
Hi, Chris. Yeah, I’m very well. Thanks, buddy. Very well. And thanks for having me on again.
Good stuff. So today we are bridging PPC specific advice with marketing advice because we do like to talk about timeless marketing tips here. And we thought we’d talk about the 5W’s of marketing for PPC campaigns. So the who, why, what, where and when. And this is a really useful framework for having a structure to make sure you’re methodically setting up your campaigns in the right way, which is why I think it’s a good thing to do. I always say too many people go into PPC accounts if they take them over and just start clicking about without having any strategy. So we know this is important, don’t we?
Absolutely.
So why do you think having a framework’s useful for this kind of thing?
Well, having a framework for many, many different aspects, you know, in business, in your life, hugely, hugely valuable. It’s basically just kind of like a little roadmap, if you will, just a very simple little checklist that you can go through and you can make sure that you’re, you know, that you’re aligned and you’re on track to really get the most amount of value out of it. As you mentioned here, it’s often overlooked, hugely effective and ultimately just helps you get results.
And, you know, with why is my first question there. Because that is the first element.
Yeah.
Of the framework. So why, which is defining your marketing goals. Why are you even doing PPC or SEO or any other type of campaign? And having that objective is so important. So let’s delve into the why and what questions you need to ask. So what’s the first question you need to ask when setting up a campaign and defining the why for it?
Okay, so for me, hours set the why, there’s a few different reasons. One, it allows you to focus. And if you’re focusing, then that drives results. Your goals then can inform your strategy. And as long as you’re, you’re measuring your progress and you can set your roi, everything that you’re going to be doing from there on out is essentially aligned with what the business wants, its goals, etc, so it allows you to prioritize resources and ultimately align with the business objectives.
Yeah, so definitely I think that last one’s the most critical. If you’re not aligning with the business objective, why even bother?
Yeah, right.
But sometimes the business objective is not necessarily financial, is it? We work with a lot of food companies and ultimately they have a financial goal, but the thing about food is that it’s consumable products, so people have to buy it again. And brand becomes quite an important objective for these campaigns, of course. And sometimes that business objective doesn’t necessarily fit with traditional PPC marketing if you’re just chasing roas, does it? So this is why asking why first is so important, because it starts to build out the different kind of campaigns that you want. So what we set here is have an objective, which is usually a sentence of what we’re trying to achieve, what outcome are we trying to achieve? So build the brand or promote a new product, et cetera, and then we’ll have key results. So measurables that are actually what we’re trying to achieve. So it might be a ROAS target, it might be a cost per acquisition target, it might be something like that. So in your experience, what’s the best way to, to communicate those, you know, those okrs and how do you then use that to move on to defining the why fully?
Yeah, no, good question. So realistically, your why is your end destination, isn’t it really? It’s why are you doing this? Is it brand exposure, as you mentioned? Is it a very ROI driven or KPI set set of values? And every single business is different. You know, we, we speak to hundreds of different businesses. You know, we’ve done thousands of audits and each separate one has a different, a different compass really. So understanding your why is very much that almost the foundations of your building. You know, if you don’t get the foundations right, nothing else from there on out really is going to be able to thrive.
Yeah, I liken it to driving in the car. If you don’t. Most people don’t get in a car just to go for a drive. They are going somewhere and first you say, okay, this is, you know, I’m driving from Manchester to London, although you might want to get the train for that. But you’re driving from Manchester to London and so you’ve got your goal and then from there you can work backwards. What’s the best route to take? Do you need to stop on the way and all that kind of thing. And it just still pains me how many businesses in house teams don’t define this. They’re just trying to continually trace an out of date arbitrary goal that’s not related back to those business objectives, as you say.
Yeah, absolutely. So and this framework, it’s not just kind of a one time thing, set it and forget it. And we like to kind of delve down into this for, for each separate kind of timeframe, each separate objective, each separate campaign to really understand and make sure that we’re setting off in the right direction.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when you’ve defined your goals and objectives and you’ve got them clearly written down and you should mutually agree those with all the stakeholders involved. So marketing team, finance team, sometimes obviously your, your partners, providers who might be providing services, make sure it integrates with any cross channel marketing you’re doing across organic and all that kind of stuff. So having everyone on the same page is the goal of having that wide defined. Then we move on to the next step of the framework. We know what we’re trying to achieve. So the next w here is who. So that’s essentially it’s identifying your target audience, isn’t it? Now this is where PPC can be a bit different, can’t it? Because you can target people a lot more specifically than in the good old days of just targeting people because they drove past a particular billboard or read a certain newspaper. So what kind of things are you looking for when you’re identifying a target audience?
Brilliant. So again, yeah, who is going to obviously be then overlaid and really directed from the why. So a little quick third party story. I was on a, I was speaking to a potential client yesterday, really successful gym owner and his who he never really kind of actually understood his whole, you know, he’d been running his own ads campaign for like last eight years and you know, got a decent amount of success out of it but, but never really kind of gone into the details of who he was trying to target and kind of what messaging he was going to give to them, which will come on into a bit. But yeah, so understanding your who, so that could be you know, Persona mapping your customer, avatars, it can come in many, many different guises. But essentially what you want to try to do is you try to work out who your ideal clients are. So that then helps you create the right messaging, you know, be found in the right areas. There’s just many, many different aspects of the who that we can then use to narrow essentially, essentially narrow down the targeting to help reduce costs, you know, increase engagement, you know, again being found on the right channels Speaking the right language, et cetera. It’s, it’s kind of your old marketing as you mentioned there with your billboards. You know, one of the old things that used to get thrown around a lot was 50% of my marketing works, 50 doesn’t, but I just don’t know which one. Yeah, you know, if you can really identify your who and you’ve got decent tracking, then again you could just, you can, you can be a lot more targeted, be a real sharp shooter versus just a spray and prey kind of, kind of approach.
And that goes back and that this is where they tie in, doesn’t it? It’s kind of what are we trying to achieve. So if it is a pure brand building play, then maybe you would be brought broader in your targeting than if you are very niche in what you do. So we work with a company once that did solar panel pigeon proofing. Very niche. It’s only people who have solar panels which tend to be a certain demographic of income and then tend to, I guess maybe pigeons are more prevalent in other areas. And that’s how are you just building up the brand and trying to get, make people aware of your service or are you doing that laser focus in who, who you’re targeting?
Exactly.
And when you’ve identified that target audience, you alluded to it before, it allows you to speak their language essentially and use the what. How does that help when starting to look at strategy and campaigns?
Yeah, Okie Koki. So again, each one of these different frameworks all kind of layer on top of each other. So essentially you get narrower and narrower and narrower. So the who again, to go back to that third party story yesterday, chap I was speaking to at the gym, so he had basically one campaign, he had like 400 different keywords in there, there and you know, limited kind of ad copy. Now in his gym he had kind of essentially different people. It was wanting to target for different things. So one of them being fat loss, one of them being, you know, weight gain, another one being bodybuilding, etc. Now he was just showing every single different, different search term you could imagine under the sun, all the same ad, all going through to the, you know, to the homepage. So again, how that could, how could that, how could that be different for your business, your brands? If you have very different products and that align with different demographics, different, essentially different problems that you’re trying to solve for your end user, then you’re going to want to be able to make sure you get the right message into the right people at the right time. So you would build out in different campaigns, different ad groups, different keywords, different landing Pages, different copy, etc. So yeah, again it’s all just layers upon layers of being as smart as possible really to try to get you the best outcome. So again, being as narrow as possible.
And that reduces, reduces your cost as well because you’re not doing this spray and pray approach.
Of course, of course.
As we always say, although the majority of what we do is Google and Facebook and these are giant companies that make loads of money, our primary goal is to save our clients from paying them any more than they need to to get better results. So by having this define why you’re doing something, what the campaign objectives are and then who you’re targeting, that’s a big part of the battle in setting up these campaigns in these platforms, isn’t it?
Yeah, very much so. All of the major PPC platforms, they are revenue driving machines and they’re driving revenue for themselves. So a lot of them will just, if you go in there, you set it up yourself, you set your campaign up, you add your keywords, then it will just go as broad as possible. And the reason being it just wants more and more people to be in the auction together, all bidding against each other because in an auction the more people you have, the more people bidding and they essentially just make more money per click. So yeah, obviously Google for instance has gone very much along the broad lines these days and it is a necessary thing to be doing these days. But you also need to work smart in the background to be able to reduce down that the places and the areas that you’re gonna, that you are going to be found for. Because it’s got knock on effects to things like quality, score, click through rates, etc. Yeah, just setting up one campaign with 400 keywords is not something that we would necessarily recommend, but really just figuring out who your target audience is because if you do that you can then create the right environment for them when they interact with your business to make sure that they see you as being the expert within that field and you essentially can just, you can sort that problem up for them. Right, that’s essentially what business is. You’re sorting problems out for people.
Absolutely, absolutely. So once you’ve, you know what your objective is and you know who you want to target, that’s when you can re, that’s, that’s only really at the point. Then I think you can even start thinking about building out a campaign. And back to my analogy before too many people just go in and start clicking about before defining those things. So once you’ve got those well defined, you’re going to be way ahead of people. Some people listening to this, this will just sound really obvious too. But other people, you know, so many people, we see it time and time again, don’t think about those things. So once you have those in place, what’s next is the what W and this is about what you’re going to put across to this target audience and, and the targeted channels and the people you’re looking to actually get the business from. And the what is all about crafting your message and offer. What kind of things do people need to think about when they start crafting that messaging and getting across what they’re trying to sell?
Okay, if I had to distill it down into its real essence, for me it would be customer centricity. Just be as customer centric as possible. Put yourself in that person’s shoes. What would they with the problem you’re solving and the solution you’ve got for them, what they want to see to make them convert, you know, how can they see you as being if the expert or, you know, the right price point? Again, this will all be easier to fall into place if you’ve got the first two W. So the why and the who you can then start obviously to craft your offer. So you’re going to want to think about focusing on the things like the benefits, not the features. An old adage on that is talk about a sizzle, not a sausage. Be concise in your messaging and really work out what your value proposition is. Obviously we see it on both sides, don’t we? We see, especially when we’re doing audits, we see some clients that have really got this nailed down and the results are just guaranteed to be better. We see others where we’re running through, we’re doing audits and we see the just messaging just isn’t quite right, just isn’t hitting, hitting the right notes. And unfortunately the results are going to suffer for that. You know, you’d be paying more per click, you’d be getting less clicks, you’d be getting fewer conversions and essentially, you know, you’d be setting the course of your business on a, on a different trajectory. So really getting your emotional connection, getting the right calls to action, the right offers, etc. We’ll really see your results improve and we see it often, don’t Chris?
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s about getting across just the physics of what you’re selling. Is it a red pen you’re selling a Red pen, that’s fine, you need to get that across. But then what the unique selling points of your solution here, crafting those into the message to make you stand out. Are you selling a commodity product, you know, something that people can buy anywhere? Do you have a unique solution or a unique spin on the solution? And how does that then tie back to who, who you’re targeting?
Yeah.
And then yes, I really like the sell the sizzle, not the always.
Yeah, always be closing as well. But yeah, there’s just tons of them. I could bore you all day just to just a tiny. Quickly back to the third party story from yesterday. Yeah, Jim, you know, he’s got many different, many different aspects and you know, if say for instance you’re looking for fat loss but then you hit the bodybuilding page, that’s not going to resonate. Right. You’re going to want to hit the page is all about those types of classes, you know, with again third party stories. And he’s got some great images on there of people who have done these kind of camps and have come out the other side, you know, losing loads of weights, feeling really good about themselves, etc. So again, just, just be as customer centric as possible. Put yourself in a position of, you know, what is their problem? How can, how can you answer that for them?
Yeah, I mean you said it there how you know, great testimonials and how they look with, with gyms is it’s about selling the person you will become rather than you. If you say someone come to my gym and sweat for an hour a day on the treadmill, that’s very different. In six weeks you could have lost it some hour away, etc. Yeah, I think the easiest of those analogies to understand for me is the people don’t buy flights, they buy holidays. You know, it’s the destination thereafter, not the flight. So that’s about crafting Nance message and it’s look, we work with a lot of B2B businesses and essentially that can be quite boring from a product to sell. But you’re essentially you’re taking a pain point of someone and solving it for them. If their commercial boiler is broken down, you’re the right people to fix it because you’ve got the experience and you can be out on site within four hours, for example, so. Or you’re, you know, you’re a plumber and you need a reliable supplier that has more some, you know, you can get good prices on what you’re after. So about this works for anything as long as you know, those, the why and what you do doing. But some things that people miss is tying that into the call to action itself is, isn’t it?
Yeah.
What kind of things do you think about when you’re creating calls to action, whether it be for any campaigns you’re creating or advising people on?
Yeah, no, good question. And again, that is going to have to be answered once you’ve looked at all the different W’s. So first of all is, you know, as we know we’ve been through is the why so what, why are you doing this? Then the who so you can speak their language. Then the what is essentially the call to action should just fall into place. It should be a very simple A through to Z of we’re offering them the perfect solution to their problem. So the call to action could be as simple as filling out a form. It might be a free quote, it could well be a buy now, it could well be sign up to a webinar or a download. The call to action really is just going to be the perfect answer and the closing section of that of your offering. So. So yeah, it’s going to be very dependent on the difference the different people you’re speaking to. So for instance, go back to the gym. You know, the call to action may well be for a free, a free taster lesson. It could well be for a free download. It could well be for, you know, even, even signing up to something very simple to like an email sequence where the, you know, the gym is going to send you a video once a week to nurture that lead along. It may well be, it may well be sign up now. It could well be something like a free event that they’re putting on. So they’re inviting people along to, you know, to understand and get used to the gym and everything that’s going on there. So yeah, your call to action really is just, it’s essentially your closer. But it’s got to feel right to the situation.
I guess that leads us on. Yeah, that, that thinking about different places in the funnel that people are, that that kind of leads us on quite nicely actually to the next W, which is where, where, you know, where are people in their buyer journey, where are you targeting them based on that, what kind of things do you need to consider? You know, what when people, when you’ve, you’ve defined why, you’ve defined who you’re targeting and what you’re going to present to them, then where you put this messaging out, this is where we can get in the weeds of we can go very in the weeds of PPC marketing, the different platforms and what they’re for. The simplest way I like to think of it is demand generation and demand capture. So on the one hand, if, if you’re just, you know, selling something that people just search for, that’s capturing demand, demand’s already there. A certain number of people search for it every month. Your job is to capture that demand to your business rather than another. Whereas if you are selling something that’s maybe a bit more unique or people need educating on, or there’s a lot of competitors and you need to educate people about why they should think that you might want to generate demand. You need to make people aware that you’re out there. And this kind of information is what’s used to then choose those marketing channels. So you say, are you using meta Facebook, Instagram for certain demographics versus Google Ads for certain, versus TikTok and Reddit. So there’s so many choices here. And then when you tie it back to timeless marketing principles, this has always been the same. The platforms will always change. Obviously TikTok’s on a big trajectory at the moment. There will be another one that comes along, but these principles are still there. So what kind of, I guess if we do a rapid fire, what kind of things do you think about when, when you’re thinking about where to actually put your advertising spending?
Right, Good question. Okay, so yeah, and I’ll try and be as succinct as possible because I could talk, I could talk all day about this, but essentially you’ve got kind of your two different platforms, haven’t you? Or your two different strategies. One is interruption based, as you’re saying, interruption based can be very much trying to drive that demand. And the other one is interest based. People already interested. Again, every single layer, this all stacks on top of it. And you should already really know you’re aware by the time you’ve done all the rest of it. But things like your Persona mapping will already have given you a good understanding and insight to where your actual, your actual perfect prospects are at any one given period. And things like your budget and your resources will give you a better understanding of how high up you can go in the funnel as well. You know, all the large companies that we’ve ever heard of and things like tv, etc, you know, those are huge, big budgets since they can interact people much higher up. Most of our clients will tend to focus, very focus on like an ROI driven relationship where we’re only able to attack people much lower down. A funnel Just purely because, you know, for each pound they put in, they need to get X amount back out. So a little bit like the slots slot machine kind of analogy where you put a pound at the top and 10 comes out at the bottom. So as long as we can get that to a certain point, then the conversation can start to start to evolve into how many pounds can we put in at the top. Yeah. So where you’re going to really want to just understand where your clients are kind of hanging out and where they’re likely to be then searching for that solution. So obviously Google Ads is a great one just purely because it owns so much of the search engine market. As you mentioned, in places like TikTok, that’s more interruption based and the targeting is probably a little bit of a certain demographic on there. So it’s really going to depend on what your product is, what solution that you’re sorting out for your clients. So depending on your budget, depending on the contents that you’ve got, your wear should easily fall into place. But for 90% of our clients, just maxing out on Google would probably double, triple, quadruple their business and put it into a completely different realm. Your wear should really be dictated by everything else that you’ve already worked out in this framework. Do you agree?
Yeah, absolutely. It’s almost as if they all tie.
Together and that’s why we use it.
But I think a key thing is when you’re deciding on the channels, it’s then you can use that to look at the content optimization that you’re doing. So some products and services lend themselves to video better than others. For example, some companies have in house teams that can generate graphics and videos. Some have no resource for that. So it’s about what’s available. So providing resources for a marketing campaign is not only physical assets, people and time, it’s what’s available and what’s possible in your market. So, but ultimately where you’re going to go, one of the big problems we have is people just want to spread themselves too thin, I find. So people will come to us and go, right, I’ve got this business idea, we need to be on Facebook, we need to be on TikTok, we need to run Google Ads. And we’re like, whoa, what’s your budget? First for that, who are you trying to target? Who’s the most likely to convert and what’s your budget? And then I liken it to a waterfall. The top of the waterfall, you just get all the water coming down and then as you get to the Bottom, it’s the trickles. What’s the biggest thing that’s going to get you over the hump? And often that is the lower down the funnel stuff where people are more targeted for what you’re actually, you know, what you’re actually selling it and capturing that. So where is an important decision. And every business thinks they’re a unique stone flake, but there are principles that we can follow that will ultimately decide that. And the key, key thing that we’re like a broken record here about is conversion tracking. Conversion tracking, conversion tracking, conversion tracking. The amount of businesses that do not do this properly, disappointingly when they work with other agencies or in house teams. If you’re not tracking and having the ability to analyze or have someone else analyze what your channels are doing and where they’re working, you can’t have this feedback loop to constantly improve things. So if you take one thing away from this podcast, it’s make sure you have your tracking in place. That will then help review the things we’ve talked about, like who are the actual customers? Because you might think your customers are certain types of people, but when you track them, you might discover that on a certain channel you attract people you didn’t realize and therefore you have to change your messaging more to that audience. So really considering where you’re going to go and having that all tracked through is another critical piece of the puzzle.
I couldn’t agree more. Tracking is the number one thing that you need to get right and honestly kind of always has been within the digital realm. And yeah, it is disappointing to see even today, you know, we’ll do audits where we’ll find, you know, brands. Tracking just isn’t correct. So we obviously we’ve got in house kind of tracking resource, hugely expensive resource for us to have. But we, you know, we need it. We live or die by the results that we get for our clients and our customers. Yeah. So it’s just something that you need to have. Again, it goes back to the old adage of my billboards and my other advertising. 50% works, 50% doesn’t. Now we’re within today’s market, you can find out which 50% doesn’t work. You can then make the data back decision to reduce spending down in that area which then has the knock on effect of you’ve now got 50% more spends to spend on the stuff that is working. Um, but without that, you know, it’s not performance marketing anymore. It’s just, it’s just marketing. It’s just advertising. It’s Just spending money. So. So yeah, we’re huge believers in it. And, and that’s the reason why we get such good results. You know, our case studies page full of, full of clients with, you know, just huge improvements because we can get in there, we can, we can improve the. Well, we can get tracking set up properly, we can then learn which areas are working and which aren’t. And then on from there we can start making those data back decisions to really start capitalizing for the brands we work with. But yeah, shame to see, isn’t it, in today’s market where tracking just isn’t set up correctly.
Exactly. And there’s no excuses because techs there. But in the old days before the Internet, which we remember, but even in direct marketing, they used to have different PO box numbers to test different messages and telephone numbers.
Yeah, yeah.
So it’s all where there’s a will, there’s a way. It’s just unfortunately the will’s not always there. But we, we bring people over to the light side and show them the tracking.
Yeah, but for a lot of people we speak to, it’s just the unknown unknowns, isn’t it? It really is. You know, they’ve, as far as they know, they’re a marketing manager, they come in say two years ago and you know, they’re trying to spin so many different plates, aren’t they? They’ve got just loads of different things going on all, all different times, all different places and they’ve just never kind of sat down and, and maybe given it the focus it really deserves. And the downside is everything else that they’re doing is all a bit slightly pointless because they’re not able to, to set their sat nav correctly. It’s a little bit like constantly putting in the wrong, you know, the wrong postcode on your sat nav because you just never got any destination that you really want to be at.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that leads us nicely onto the final W, which is when. So there are, which seems, seems counterintuitive at first because it’s sort of, well, if I need to advertise, I need to advertise. How does when factor in? But there are, when you delve deeper, there are things like when are your promotions, are there any seasonal considerations, all that kind of thing. So what kind of things do you think about when you’re looking at when to do campaigns?
Okay, so the when for me, and lots of different aspects, things like seasonality, you know, have you set up things like a content calendar. What it essentially allows you to do again, it’s just taking that setback. It’s just figuring out actually what does my next 12 months look like, you know, or three years but usually start with say a 12 month period, you know, is, is the season analysis throughout the year, you know, are you a summer led business? So you’re going to see spikes kind of September, spring through to maybe September. Are you, you know, e commerce retailer that you know is very much going to be ramping up across the, the holiday season or your service led business. And again the seasonality kind of comes in and comes out depending. So as long as you’ve got your again going back to your tracking so you’ll be able to look through the results that you’ve got, you know, in your past advertising and marketing. But yeah, but again it’s just coming back to setting your compass in the right direction. Try to work out what different offers you may want at different kind of seasonalities, what different products you might be wanting to sell, what different services might be, you know, throughout the year. So again it’s, it really is just making sure that it’s an old adage, it’s a, it’s a, an example is you wouldn’t just get into your car, you wouldn’t just walk out your house, jump in your car and head off to France. You know, you’d do your research around this, you’d work out what stopovers you needed, you’d work out, you know, brakes on the way, you’d figure out when the ferries and stuff are leaving. So yeah, it’s just being as smart as possible, making sure that everything is all aligned to the timeline that helps us because we like to learn every single thing about obviously the brands we work with and really make sure that we’re doing the right things at the right time to really get the best outcomes for the clients that we work with. Do you agree on all that, Chris? Anything?
Yeah, absolutely. And also you’re going to want to factor that in. The when can also be around budgets and resource availability, let’s be honest. So sometimes businesses will set their budget in alignment with the financial year and then part of our job is to pace budget spends in the right way for a business because unfortunately that might not be the best thing for marketing, but it’s the best thing of the corporate world that you live in that you get budgets for a certain time and then you’re going to have a budget for. You might have a project to try something for three months or for six months to prove a channel works. We know that having enough time to prove channels work is important. So there’s other, this is where you can involve other stakeholders as well. Also you can’t do everything all the time, all at once. So you might have project based work to do as well as the traditional seasonal considerations etc. And then having some flexibility built into that because things do change, you know, remember you know, we, we live through Covid happening as a business and how that impacted our clients and having to adapt and then when was still a thing, when do we switch our ads back on, when do we turn them off? And then the peaks and troughs and all that kind of thing, having that flexibility. But it’s still a when equation there that needs considering.
Yeah, couldn’t agree more.
Well, we’ve covered a lot there and I think that’s an extremely useful framework for anything in and out of marketing to consider all those things. So why are you doing something? You know, define your marketing goals, who, who you’re targeting, have that nailed down, understand who your target audience is, what are you trying to get across that audience, make sure you are solving their pain points with your solution. Where are you going to target it? Target them which you know, we’ve got other episodes on different targeting mechanisms and types and why you use different platforms and ultimately when and how that all fits in. And having having this framework is really going to simple though it is. It’s just going to set you up for far better results and it’s going to set you up. If you’re a marketing manager wanting to progress in your career and you’re bringing this to the table when you’re discussing things with a board, it shows your switch on, it shows you thought about stuff and it shows you are the one to progress your career. So it’s a very useful framework and it’s been great to tap into your expertise Dan and talk through this. So thank you for coming on today and have you got any closing thoughts for the audience?
Thank you very much Chris. No, yeah, I would just iterate what you said there. Really spend half a day this week and just go through this, jot it down. You can even just jot it down in a notebook and just go through each separate thing and just take a look from your client’s perspective. You know, go through the why, the who, the what, the where, the when. And make sure that everything is, is fully aligned to for you to be the best solution for them. If not then you know, flag it, maybe even run some A B tests, you know, Google Ads, you can set up a B test for landing pages, ad copy, all the rest of it. So yeah, just, just try to be SM art and, and let the data inform you of which, which one is the winner because it’s incremental gains. You know, you improve one area by say 1 or 2% and then the next area again, another 1 or 2%, and then it’s a compounded effect over the days, the weeks, the months as you’re continually kind of iterating and essentially getting better. But yeah, I hope at least one person out there finds some value in this and goes away. Go away and does it. And yeah, if you do shoot us up, I’m sure we can probably get you on a pod in the future and you can let us know how it goes.
Absolutely. Well, thanks for coming on and we’ll see you on another episode soon, I’m sure. And for anyone listening, we are looking for more podcast guests. If you work in the digital marketing industry, do reach out to us via our website. But otherwise, thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Thanks a lot. Bye for now.
